Rotary presses, as they as are used, for example, for the production of tablets, have a rotor, which guides the upper and lower punches and contains a die plate whose holes work together with the press punches. The rotor is driven about a vertical axis by a suitable drive. At least one filling apparatus, which fills the powder to be compressed into the die holes, is assigned to the rotor. Further, at least one compression station is provided with an upper and a lower compression roller, which push the assigned press punches into the die holes. Additionally, an ejector station, in which the ejected pellets are removed from the rotor, is assigned to the rotor. The ejector station can also contain a switch in order to separate good pellets from faulty pellets, or also to remove a number of test pellets. Such a rotary press is usually placed in a housing so that process dust does not escape, and on the other hand, a contamination of press parts by contaminated atmosphere of the environment is prevented.
It is known to assign different sensors with such a rotary press. For example, the compression force, which the compression rollers exert on the press punches is measured in order to set it to a desired value. The compression rollers can be adjusted by a suitable adjustment device. Furthermore, a temperature sensor can be located in the housing, or also a sensor with which the consistency of the material to be compressed, or the concentration of individual active agents can be determined. Further, sensors can be provided that monitor the correct assembly of the individual parts of the rotary press. The sensors are usually connected to a workstation computer for the rotary press. The workstation computer is connected to the rotary press via a cable. However, instead of a cable, a wireless transmission of sensor signals to and from the workstation computer can take place.
It is further known to make at least part of the rotary press housing transparent. Nonetheless, the view from the outside onto procedures that are relevant to the process is frequently hindered or impossible due to casing panels, e.g. due to a dust extraction system or other machine components. The rotary presses are driven, to some extent, at high speed. Rapid process sequences can hardly be tracked through observation with the human eye, e.g. the discharge of the tablets, the sorting and removal of the tablets, the plunging of the press punch into the bores of the punch receiver, etc.
The invention is based on the objective to create a visual monitoring device for rotary presses with which even rapidly proceeding productions can be recorded at any location of the rotary press.